Wow, so much is happening, and I seem to have fallen behind in my plans to blog and share this experience more regularly as well as share interesting info about creativity and innovation. So, let me catch you up a bit.
In the last few weeks I have been planning and delivering a several workshop on creativity and innovation, and how to incorporate these ideas into people’s everyday lives, whether that is on a personal or professional level. It has been great fun, and I’ve received some wonderful, insightful feedback on how to make the workshops even better, which I am extremely grateful for!
I got a bit of disappointing news that the innovation trip to Silicon Valley that I was going to facilitate some sessions on was cancelled, and in fact the business unit that was in charge of the trip has been absorbed back into the main company, and none of the trips that were being planned are going to go ahead.
On Friday, September 7th, I attended my first Creative Mornings: Berlin meeting, the theme was <chaos>, which definitely spoke to me, both from the painting that I do, as well as my consulting work in knowledge management, where I had given myself the title, “Chief Chaos Organiser”. I enjoyed the session very much and am looking forward to future meetings. During the session the organiser stated that they were looking for a speaker for the October meeting, where the theme is <honesty> and I thought, I could do that, so was one of 4 people who spoke to him afterwards about speaking next month. The abstracts/outlines are being reviewed, so I don’t know right now, if mine will be selected or not.
While I was working on my abstract, I realised just how important this theme is to me. I went from thinking, “omg, what I am going to talk about?” to, “omg, I have so many things I could talk about, how am I going to narrow it down?”, which was a nice problem to have. The theme touches, not just my consulting work, but my painting.
The thread that runs through both areas of my life is the idea of being honest about who I am and what I want for my life. I went back to the idea of how creativity is educated out of us in order to conform and fit in and be like everyone else, and for myself, and many others, I have spent a great deal of time and effort to figure out what that is: what do I like, what do I want for my life, what career do I want, where do I want to live????
So much of what I learned in 20 years of education was about doing what was expected of me, trying to fit in, be like everyone else, make the adults in my life happy, somewhere along the line, I stopped asking the question, “what do I want”, and started asking the question, “what am I supposed to do?”, which is the totally wrong question to ask, although I only realised that years later.
I had learned so well, to not be honest about who/what I was and wanted, that I hadn’t even realised it, until NONE of it had worked out the way it was “supposed to” and I was left with nothing of what I was “supposed to have by now”.
Since that time, I have tried out lots of things, some I liked, some I didn’t. I hated rock climbing. But I love being self-employed and having the flexibility and freedom to do the things I have done: worked with international clients, spoken at conferences around the world, published various books and articles. I love the painting that I do, and sharing it with people in my exhibitions, and on my website. I love living in Berlin, and am so glad I made this move, it has opened up a whole new facet of my life, and I’m doing things I could never have done if I had stayed were I was. That’s not to say everything has been easy, the move to Berlin is quite possibly the most difficult thing I have ever done. Making new friends, getting connected and integrated into life here, and learning German (which is still a work-in-progress, but I refuse to give up), has been HARD, but I have no regrets, and am grateful and consider myself lucky to have this experience.
Starting Entelechy, is both the realisation of my own potential, and gives me the opportunity to help other’s realise their potential whether it’s on an organisational or personal level.
Entelechy is honestly who I am, and why I’m here.
Edit: as of September 10 at 10am CET, I just got word that my proposal to speak at the Creative Mornings: Berlin event in October has been accepted! Woo hoo! Here’s the link: October talk
